Wolf Tracks - Bianca D'Arc Page 0,83
magical but not a shifter. Big John seemed to take that news in stride and didn’t ask for details. At that point, Jim had to wonder if all he’d heard about Grizzly Cove becoming a haven for all sorts of magical folk was true. That would certainly explain the Alpha bear’s easygoing attitude.
Jim was about to check in with his Uncle Arch when the hairs on the back of his neck stood on end. If he’d been in wolf form, he’d have said his hackles rose. Whatever it was, he knew that feeling. Trouble was coming and coming fast.
“Something’s about to happen,” he said, warning Helen as best he could. “Be alert. Something bad is coming.”
In the last moments before the shit hit the fan, Jim placed a call to Ezra. “Better send the cavalry. Something’s going down,” Jim said shortly, giving Ezra their location just as lightning struck a tree ahead and sent it crashing across the road. Helen stood on the brake, and the rental car stopped just shy of the massive pine. Jim was alert, giving a terse recap of events to Ezra, even as he armed himself and got ready for action.
Then, there was no time left.
“Get out of the car!” Jim yelled at Helen, diving for the driver’s side door as she rolled out of it. A woman approached the passenger side, lightning playing about her hands.
He realized in an instant, that she’d felled the tree, not lightning from the sky. For one thing, the few clouds above weren’t storm clouds. It was a beautiful day with no rain. The lightning was a mage bolt, and it had come from the woman.
Jim got a good look at her face, and a sinking feeling filled his stomach. She looked familiar. She looked a lot like the late, unlamented Otalla, in fact.
Helen scrambled for cover at the side of the road as Jim pushed her to hurry. A shimmer of electricity went down his spine as he received a glancing blow from the mage bolt the woman threw at them. As a shifter, he had some natural defenses to magical attack, but Helen had none that he knew of. If the bolts were going to fly, he’d have to cover her, but he could only take so much without faltering. He prayed as he’d never prayed before, for the Goddess to keep Helen safe.
“You killed my sister!” the woman shrieked, and Jim had his suspicions confirmed. “I don’t know who you are, but I followed your magical trail all over the damned country with my scrying bowl, and you came almost to my front door. You bastards!”
She let go with another bolt, but they were off the road, in the trees, which offered a little cover, though not enough. Jim tried to stall.
“I don’t know who you are or who your sister was, lady,” he called out, signaling to Helen to go farther away, under better cover. He was going to draw the woman’s fire and hopefully give Helen a chance to hide.
“How soon they forget,” the woman scoffed. “I am Maura Dunlevy, and you killed my sister, Otalla. She was partnered to that great lump, Somersby, or whatever he was calling himself this week. I told her she could do better.” Little lightning zaps leapt from her fingers to the road as she stalked closer, hunting them. “I kept magical surveillance on them, always. I saw what happened. I saw what you did to her!” A large bolt took out the tree next to Jim, and he dove the other way as it toppled onto the road. “I want you both dead, but I want that witch to suffer, like my dear Otalla suffered. You hear me, witch?” Lightning danced through the trees, taking out a few, here and there.
This woman had power, Jim would give her that, but was she stable mentally? And what could he do with that? Jim thought hard about how to destabilize her enough to get her to make a mistake and leave herself open for attack. It would be tricky, but he might just be able to pull it off.
“So, you’re an old lady, like your bitch of a sister?” he asked, almost conversationally.
He saw no reason to continue denying he understood what she was going on about. She was pissed, and she was going to attack them, no matter what he said. He might as well use what he knew to throw her off balance, if he could.
She screamed